With the @sddBCN 2020 event due to take place tomorrow, it feels like an appropriate time to ask the question - Does #servicedesign have a dirty little secret? A thread -

Having spent the last few weeks interviewing and speaking with other designers with organisational experiences, some themes and questions are beginning to emerge...

firstly, is the SD community too focused on monopolising and monetising tools, methodologies and principles while avoiding the more tricky skill sets needed to influence and make real change in large organisations?

As we see more in-house teams forming, some would argue that we’ve let the traditional service design consultancy model break (perhaps for the better?) In this scenario, do designers learn or are they taught enough about nuanced organisational characteristics before embedding?

Organisations are processes, systems, people, relationships, policies, governance, culture. Services we design are the outcome of these. - Via @breasy, @marcfonteijn and the http://ServiceDesignShow.com 

Is it enough to learn about service design principles and methods? Do current SD tools miss or even ignore the realities of working with or inside organisations?

Perhaps moving in-house is just a baptism of fire that we need in order to learn? There is often an adoption problem when embedding SD in orgs, SD fights against the established ways of working. You often must experience it to understand it.

Or do we lose potentially excellent designers who don’t make it through the baptism for a number of reasons? Or, does this result in designers creating & sitting in their own 'bubbles'? Is there a design arrogance we need to tame to be successful in making changes inside orgs?

Within these large corporates/organisations that have in-house designers, design groups often develop 'safe spaces' while heads of design become 'shields'. Is this a good thing or does it encourage design ‘bubble’ behaviour?

We have design/human centric principles that we adopt, but we sometimes neglect when we need to be taken seriously internally? To be taken seriously, we often need to become “authoritative”. How can we enable SD's to play this role while staying true to their values?

Is there a middle ground between organisational design and service design that we are missing?

It feels like we need new tools to address these issues, some teams are already working on these - emotional training, confidence training etc. But at the same time, it feels like we are avoiding the issue.

If we don’t talk about the problem, how are we supposed to develop new tools and fix it? How do we move forward and empower design leaders to solve these problems, do we need an open space to discuss these issues together?